There's not much to laugh about these days, but the news that smokers might be protected from Covid-19 is certainly one of them. With study after study showing that smokers are under-represented in coronavirus wards, the renowned French neuroscientist, Jean-Pierre Changeux, is working on a randomised control trial to test the effect of nicotine patches on Covid-19 patients.

This is far from being a crackpot theory. Changeux has explained his hypothesis at length here. In simple terms, he says that nicotinic acetylcholine receptors play a key role in the development of the disease and that nicotine can put a brake on it. If he is right - and the banter heuristic says he is - it would not only save thousands of lives but would also be one in the eye for the 'public health' groups who have been claiming that smoking and vaping are risk factors for Covid-19.

These groups are so used to lying with impunity that they wasted no time in asserting that smoking caused coronavirus complications when the pandemic began. In the US, newspapers have been filled with reports that smokers and vapers 'may' be at greater risk from Covid-19, a weasel word that requires no evidence. A group of doctors in New York urged governor Andrew Cuomo to ban the sale of all tobacco and e-cigarette products on the false premise that 'mounting evidence demonstrates the link between tobacco use and increased risk for progressive Covid-19'. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has been taking occasional breaks from flattering the Chinese Communist Party to make evidence-free assertions about smokers being 'likely' to suffer more from the coronavirus.

Comment: Now consider the sinister aspect of this 'discovery': since this 'pandemic' began, governments have been pushing to eliminate the sale of tobacco products faster and more completely than ever...

12-year-old autistic Thorn Schwarz was kicked out of school when Cuomo forced an "emergency regulation" in August of 2019 that illegally took away a valid medical exemption to vaccination Thorn had for years. Now not only has Thorn been allowed back into school permanently, judge Dan Doyle has reached a preliminary ruling that Governor Cuomo and the New York Department of Health have "over-stepped" their authority.

That's real good!

It means we have come much closer to getting hundreds of disabled children back into school in New York with valid medical exemptions to vaccination! The case isn't over, but it is moving in the right direction. This is a major blow for Governor Cuomo and his Commissioner of Health Howard Zucker.

Gates acknowledged that he's usually the optimist in the room, reminding people that we're lifting children out of poverty around the globe and getting better at eliminating diseases like polio and malaria.

But "there's one area though where the world isn't making much progress," Gates said, "and that's pandemic preparedness."

Comment: Not to minimize the possibility of a pandemic, but Bill and Melinda Gates do seem to have a thing for vaccinating the world:

In my first SOTT article published on April 19th, I reported my statistical comparison of COVID-19 infection and death rates based on percentages of whole populations. I generously assumed that the numbers reported by Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere are entirely correct and accurate, fully cognizant that this assumption is extremely questionable.

In my earlier article we learned that, as of 10:00am, April 15th, Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST):

99.994% of China's 1.4 billion population was uninfected
99.729% of Italy's 60 million population
99.817% of USA's 330 million population
99.633% of Spain's 47 million population
99.842% of Germany's 83 million population
99.910% of Iran's 83 million population
99.798% of France's 65 million population
99.698% of Switzerland's 8.6 million population
99.858% of UK's 67 million population
99.979% of South Korea's 51 million population
99.889% of Sweden's 10.3 million population
99.974% of Australia's 25 million population
99.974% of the World's 7.5 billion population

The media, including the Drudge Report, is mocking President Trump for his comments at Thursday's White House coronavirus task force briefing where he tossed out suggestions for treating patients along the lines of chemo-therapy or light therapy.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

President Trump was ridiculed in February for suggesting that "the heat, generally speaking, kills this kind of virus." CNN's Anderson Cooper, Alisyn Camerota and many others openly mocked him over his naiveté. Well, it turns out he was right.

A new study from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has shown that sunlight and humidity kills COVID-19.

At Thursday's White House briefing, William N. Bryan, the acting undersecretary for Science and Technology at DHS, told reporters:

"We've identified that heat and humidity is a weakness in that chain. We've identified that sunlight, solar light, UV rays, is a weakness in that chain. That doesn't take away the other activities, the White House guidelines, the guidance from the CDC and others on the actions and the steps that people need to take to protect themselves. This is just another tool in our toolbox, another weapon in the fight that we can add to it. And we know that summer-like conditions are going to create an environment where the transmission can be decreased, and that's an opportunity for us to get ahead."

Bryan said his team has seen the "powerful effect" that solar light has on the virus "both on surfaces and in the air." They've seen a similar effect with both heat and humidity.

The number of COVID-19 patients in serious condition in Wuhan, the central China city once hardest hit by the epidemic, has dropped to zero, a health official said Friday.

The last patient in serious condition in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, was cured Friday, reducing the number of such patients in the city to zero, said Mi Feng, spokesperson for the National Health Commission (NHC), at a press conference in Beijing.

According to the commission's daily report issued earlier Friday, the last patient in severe condition in Wuhan was also the only severe case in Hubei as of Thursday.

No new confirmed cases were reported Thursday in Hubei and there are no suspected cases in the province, according to the NHC.

It was the 20th consecutive day for the province to report no new confirmed or suspected cases, said Mi.

Comment: It's doubtful that China's authoritarian lockdown measures did much if anything to actually stop the spread of the virus. It simply ran its course, as it is doing in countries all over the world. Assuming any measures that governments have taken are even effective at all, there is no justification for those taken by China, and now, Western nations too. South Korea didn't go full Mao, and Sweden's response has not seen the disaster scenario that expert predictors thought they should have seen by now. But China, and soon all those nations who followed suit, will justify the lockdowns because of their 'success' in stopping the spread of the virus - when the spread most likely would have stopped on its own, in the absence of such harsh measures.

Early antibody testing for the coronavirus in 19 New York counties suggests up to 2.7 million people could have been infected in the state alone, meaning the real death rate may be much lower, Governor Andrew Cuomo has revealed.

Results from a random testing sample of 3,000 New Yorkers have revealed that some 13.9 percent of state residents have likely had and recovered from the coronavirus, Cuomo stated in a press conference on Thursday.

While the governor cautioned that the results were preliminary and varied county by county, he still managed to throw the perception of the virus as a mortal threat for New Yorkers into question. The new numbers indicate that this revised infection rate, compared to 15,740 deaths linked to coronavirus statewide, points to a fatality rate of only about 0.5 - much lower than previously believed.

New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the US, and New York City has been hardest hit given its high population density. However, even in the city, where 21.2 percent tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies (1.77 million people) during this trial, a casualty count of 15,000 deaths points to a fatality rate of 0.8 percent.

Comment: This is the fourth such study in the U.S. showing this. Take home points seem to be: a) the lockdown doesn't work, b) the mortality rate is a fraction of what the authorities have been saying up until this point. Actual thinking scientists have been saying these things since close to the beginning. Maybe it's time to start listening? See also:

Comment: They would save themselves trouble if they just gave them tobacco to smoke...

French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent - or lessen the effects of - the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.

Doctors at a major hospital in Paris - who also found low rates of smoking among the infected - are now planning to give nicotine patches to COVID-19 patients.

They will also give them to frontline workers to see if the stimulant has any effect on preventing the spread of the virus, according to reports.

Comment: BUT they're only giving them to select COVID-19 patients for 'trials'. Meanwhile, they're moving to BAN the sale of nicotine patches. They know tobacco products work, so they're in a race to control the supply before people realize the scam:

The use of language - or rather, the misuse of language - remains at the forefront of the media's effort to maintain global public support for the most draconian and widespread curtailment of civil liberties ever implemented.

The most successful lies are always false representations of reality that are based on something true, and they typically appeal to our better instincts. But if you don't read between the lines, the liars win, and you will end up doing the opposite to what you believe you are doing - in this case, protecting the vulnerable and your loved ones.

After it became apparent that COVID-19 broadly afflicts only the very old and very sick, a media blitz followed about tragic cases of COVID-19 in minors and infants. In the following video I analyze some of these reports and show them to be, at best, without foundation - at worst, insidious lies by omission.